NAGC Welcomes Lacy Compton as Director of Content & Learning

NAGC is excited to welcome Lacy Compton, MA, to the team as Director of Content & Learning. We asked Lacy to share her background and experience in the field of gifted education.

Within the last four weeks as Director of Content & Learning, I’ve already connected (and reconnected) with many members in the field of gifted education—a community that has greatly impacted my life, career, and passion for adult learning. 

Growing up in Waco, TX, I began reading at age 3 and never stopped—consuming books faster than my parents could provide them. A well-trained first-grade teacher noticed my advanced reading skills when others had not and discussed with my parents, who knew nothing of gifted education,  how they could  advocate for my needs. The gifted and talented program I joined soon after shaped my academic life in innumerable ways and I’ll forever be thankful for the educators in that program who knew how to teach kids like me.

After graduating from Baylor University in 2004 with a degree in journalism, I took a risk and answered a classified ad for an editorial position at an educational publisher (yes, back when seeking out a job in the newspaper was still the norm)—a job for which I wasn’t fully qualified. This email led to a 12-year career with Prufrock Press, where I had the invaluable opportunity to work with and learn from many of the great experts in the field of gifted education. I edited hundreds of books, built valuable relationships, grew a depth of content knowledge, attended events like the NAGC Annual Conference, and honed a relentless eye for formatting references. 

In 2017, I joined the amazing team at the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented. As TAGT’s Professional Learning & Partnerships Director, I had the opportunity to cultivate innovative professional learning opportunities for educators of gifted and talented students. Watching members learn from one another, feeling valued, and remembering why they work in this field transformed my experience in gifted education. My experience at TAGT reinforced my belief that a well-run association with a passionate membership can have a lasting, positive impact on student advocacy and education.  

This past fall, my husband and I moved our family from Austin to Central Illinois to accommodate my husband’s new job, a move that gave me the opportunity to join the NAGC team. After nearly 20 years of supporting gifted education, the NAGC community is near and dear to me, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to develop exciting and innovative professional learning products and programs for NAGC members.

Professional learning is a lot like the chance I took that sparked my career in gifted education. Our members select a learning opportunity based on a need – maybe they see it on social media or an ad in a journal or website, they then enter into an experience that they hope transforms their lives and that of their students.

Creating powerful professional learning experiences also involves taking risks—digging deep into the needs of our members, implementing new ways of presenting content, diversifying perspectives, and taking a chance on emerging voices, and moving outside our comfort zones.

It's with these principles in mind that I happily move forward into my work with NAGC. I look forward to collaborating with our members and my teammates to continue to influence the lives of gifted students—and their educators—across the country. 

During the closing days of November, Native American Heritage Month, the story of Stuart Tonemah and his importance to gifted education is particularly timely. Stuart was a Native American advocate, administrator, educator, and scholar active in gifted education during the 1980s, 1990s, and the early 2000s. Stuart was a foundational figure in gifted education and influenced gifted education through federally funded projects and as a frequent consultant to the nation on both gifted education and Indian education affairs. He was of Kiowa/Comanche descent.

Stuart A. Tonemah was born in Lawton, Oklahoma in 1941 and graduated from high school there. He went on to Cameron University where he played college football and was on the Cameron Aggies team that won the Junior College Rose Bowl in 1961. Known as Golden Toes Tonemah, Stuart kicked an important field goal in the game as reported in the Aggies archives. He was talented in many domains and sport was one of them.

Stuart attended the University of Oklahoma and later pursued doctoral studies at Penn State where a number of students from one Kiowa elementary school were inspired to study. He left Pennsylvania to join the faculty of the famed Haskell Indian College in Lawrence, Kansas.

Stuart spent much of his professional life in academic settings. He was appointed the first director of the Native American Program at Dartmouth College in 1971. There, he distinguished himself as a successful and dignified advocate who was able to convince the Dartmouth administration to act on several requests from the Native American student community—increased Native American faculty and productive attitudinal changes in the college administration. In the 1970s, when sports iconography often used Indian themes, Stuart was not able to persuade Dartmouth leaders to change team mascots and cheers, but he argued eloquently and forcefully for such changes in campus publications. The college publications are filled with Stuart making his case and letters-to-the-editor responses.

In the 1980s, Stuart established a non-profit, American Indian Research and Development (AIRD). It would prove to be instrumental in his goals for developing the talents of Native American students and their teachers. Three of his projects capture the breadth of Stuart’s vision and the sustainability of his leadership across decades.

First, he developed Explorations in Creativity (EIC), a program funded by the U. S. Department of Education and administered through AIRD. Stuart situated EIC, a four-week summer camp, at the Riverside Indian School near Anadarko, Oklahoma which first opened its doors in 1875. As one of four remaining Bureau of Indian Education boarding schools external to a reservation, Riverside offered the housing, kitchens, a space that allowed EIC to be an extended camp for Native American students from all over the United States including Alaska. Photos of EIC participants show emerging adolescents and adolescents in the performing and fine arts, discussing Indian philosophy, filming artisans like basketweavers at work, and lined up for early morning fun runs with Stuart himself. EIC was a family affair: Stuart’s youngest daughter attended EIC as a participant and his eldest daughter was pressed into camp counselor service. Over 40 years later, alumnae of EIC participate in a Facebook page which keeps them connected with one another.  

Second, Stuart developed Project EAGLE, Effective Activities for Gifted Leadership Education, described as a Saturday intervention for Indian adolescents in Grades 9 through 12 and their families. Although Project EAGLE is the subject of a journal publication, it comes alive when a lucky reader opens three perfectly preserved and labeled “scrapbooks” from the early 1990s.  Inside are scrupulously labeled photographs, daily program agendas, student artwork, and a hand-illustrated map that shows the 15 existing and 2 future sites of Project EAGLE. They spread across the country like tenacious buffalo grass radiating out from Oklahoma to Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oregon, with the two future sites in such diverse geographical settings as Montana and Louisiana. Photographs and agendas in these documentary treasures indicate that Stuart may have visited many or all of the sites himself.

Third, Stuart understood that teachers were critical to the success of gifted education in the Native American community. He saw them as the “next to the last piece of the puzzle.” Stuart acted accordingly and wrote, received, and administered a grant to prepare 30 Native American teachers through a masters degree in Gifted Education, the American Indian Teacher Training Program (AITTP). A whopping 28 of the 30 teachers completed the program. His success rate for candidate completion was phenomenal. And, again, his personal reach was deep and lasting— a lovely and poignant note from one of his AITTP graduates rests respectfully on a legacy website announcing his death in 2009.

Stuart’s scholarly work was ground-breaking in its day. He first tackled the issues of assessment and wrote convincingly that giftedness for Native Americans must include tribal and community knowledge as well as measures of academic prowess. Reviewing the syllabi of his teacher training program, we find evidence of his early work on the identification of talents among Native American students as well as his dedication to a curriculum that honored the Native American world view. His assessment model directly incorporated a scale to tap Tribal and Cultural Knowledge to be completed by tribal elders. He was a consultant to the influential 1991 federal report, National Excellence: The Case for Developing America’s Talent.

Stuart was a leader in the Indian education movement as well, serving as the presidentially appointed Executive Director of the National Advisory Council on Indian Education (NACIE) from 1977 to 1979 which advises the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of the Interior and as the president of the National Indian Education Association in 1979. He was recognized as the Indian Educator of the Year in 1980-1981.

I met Stuart Tonemah once, perhaps twice, at NAGC conferences. He was at the height of his leadership; I was new to the field. Perhaps sensing I was homesick for the seemingly limitless prairie and the fragrance of Wyoming sage, we stood in a conference room at a refreshment table and talked about the acquired taste for high plains habitat and the importance of being able to see long distances in a Western landscape. Decades on, my chance encounter with him over a conference snack table resonates. Later, I read his work and came to understand that his was--and is--a foundational voice in gifted education.  

Ann Robinson, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor and founder of the Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.

The views expressed here are not necessarily those of NAGC    

This article first appeared in the July 2022 issue of TESOL Connections. Copyright TESOL International Association. Reprinted with permission. 

There is clear and mounting evidence that gifted education must address the serious challenges associated with the underidentification and underservicing of diverse populations of gifted students (Peters, 2022; Siegle et al., 2016). For example, English learners (ELs) are the fastest growing population of learners in the US, yet they are among the most underrepresented groups in gifted education (Gubbins et al., 2020; Hodges et al., 2018; Mun et al., 2020). Each year, tens of thousands of talented young people are overlooked for gifted services simply because they learned a language other than English as a child. Their teachers focus on their English skills and fail to recognize the brilliant mind they possess.

In a recent National Center for Research on Gifted Education (NCRGE) study of all elementary school students in three states, ELs were between a quarter and half as likely to be identified as gifted compared to students who were not ELs. Underrepresentation also persists for twice-exceptional students: students from poverty and Black, Latinx, and American Indian populations. ELs as well as other underserved groups are clearly not having their gifts and talents recognized, and subsequently appropriately developed.

In 2016 and 2017, the NCRGE visited 16 schools in nine districts across three states that had a record of successfully identifying ELs for their gifted programs (Gubbins et al., 2020). NCRGE recorded how these schools successfully identified ELs for gifted services. What we learned can be used to better identify ELs for gifted programs.

Finding Promise in Every Student

We found that identifying ELs, as well as students from other underserved populations, for gifted services required a paradigm shift where stakeholders focused on students’ strengths, rather than focusing on their weaknesses. Under this paradigm, every stakeholder, from school psychologists to EL service providers to classroom teachers to parents/guardians/caretakers, formed a web of communication and served as talent scouts looking for points of promise in every student. In other words, instead of serving as deficit detectives finding reasons not to provide gifted services to ELs, which often occurs, they recognized and appreciated the diverse ways ELs could demonstrate their talents.

These schools used professional development to improve school personnel’s awareness of EL issues related to identification. The increased awareness resulted in changes in identification practices, the evolution of a web of communication among all stakeholders, and modifications in program services.

Changing Identification Practices

Changes in identification practices included

• providing preidentification opportunities to encourage emergence of talents,

• having flexible cut-off scores,

• using universal screening to avoid overlooking talented students,

• setting alternative pathways to identification to increase opportunities for talents to be recognized,

• frequently screening students to identify students whose talents manifest later or after their English skills are further developed, and

• using culturally appropriate assessments, such as testing in students’ native languages.

Frequently screening students was particularly important given that ELs’ opportunities to be identified increased with their English acquisition (Hamilton et al., 2020). Each of these practices has the potential to increase the number of ELs identified for gifted services.

Stakeholder Communication

The evolution of a web of communication promoted awareness of EL talent among all stakeholders (e.g., administrators, district gifted coordinators, gifted specialists, parents/guardians/caretakers, EL specialists, classroom teachers, school psychologists, and counselors). This encouraged the practice of stakeholders serving as talent scouts.

It also increased the trustworthiness of communications among the stakeholders about opportunities for talent development. Teachers were less worried about nominating ELs whose English might not be fully developed. Parents/guardians/caretakers were willing to approach the school and share information about their children’s talents. EL specialists felt comfortable talking with gifted specialists about the students they served.

Modifying Program Services

The improved awareness of EL identification issues also resulted in modifications to program services. The schools developed culturally responsive curricula and added support services to ensure ELs were successful in the gifted and talented program. These program modifications increased trustworthiness in communication among stakeholders and improved acceptance rates and placement of ELs in the gifted and talented program. Parents/guardians/caretakers knew their children would be supported in the gifted program.

15 Tips for Improving the Identification of ELs for Gifted Services*

Adopt Universal Screening Procedures

1. Adopt a policy of universal screening of all students in one or more grade levels for the identification process.

2. Select assessment instruments that are culturally sensitive and account for language differences.

3. Assess the speed of English language acquisition and monitor the rate of mastering reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in English.

4. Consider including reliable and valid nonverbal ability assessments as part of the overall identification process.

5. Use other identification tools to supplement results of universal screening.

Create Alternative Pathways to Identification

6. Use native language ability and achievement assessments as indicators of potential giftedness, when available.

7. Maintain a list of multilingual school psychologists who are qualified to administer assessments in students’ native languages.

8. Establish a preparation program prior to formal identification procedures that provides students with learning opportunities to enhance knowledge and academic skills necessary for a student to be recognized.

9. Create a talent pool list of students who exhibit high potential but are not yet enrolled in gifted and talented programs. Observations, daily interactions between teachers and students, informal assessments, and formal assessments provide multiple opportunities to gauge students’ learning progress. Make identification of giftedness an ongoing process rather than a single event.

Establish a Web of Communication

10. Establish an identification committee that includes representatives who have key responsibilities in various roles and departments.

11. Develop and implement intentional outreach to the school community, particularly parents/guardians/caretakers. This process should utilize multiple pathways in languages appropriate to the population.

12. Emphasize collaboration within and across specializations/departments (e.g., general education, English as a second language [ESL], special education, gifted education) so people view themselves as talent scouts.

View Professional Development as a Lever for Change

13. Provide professional development opportunities for school personnel about effective policies and practices to support equitable representation of ELs in gifted and talented programs.

14. Develop a systematic approach to analyzing district and school demographics and the status of students identified/not identified for gifted and talented programs.

15. Promote efforts to diversify the teaching corps so that the adult community of a school reflects the student population.

Conclusion

The historic patterns of underrepresentation in gifted and talented programs can be disrupted through recognizing the barriers of current and historic identification practices and pursuing new culturally sustaining approaches. This begins with evaluating and changing current practices that function as barriers to recognizing and serving the advanced learning needs of students in underrepresented groups. Schools must recognize that students’ cultural and linguistic identities are inseparable from their academic identities and provide a welcoming and inclusive school climate for all students and their families.

*The 15 tips for improving the identification of ELs for gifted services were first published on the National Center for Research on Gifted Education website at ncrge.uconn.edu/el-tips-2.

References

Gubbins, E. J., Siegle, D., Peters, P. M., Carpenter, A. Y., Hamilton, R., McCoach, D. B., Puryear, J. S., Langley, S. D., & Long, D. (2020). Promising practices for improving identification of English learners for gifted and talented programs. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 43(4), 336–369. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353220955241

Hamilton, R., Long, D., McCoach, D. B., Hemmler, V., Siegle, D., Newton, S. D., Gubbins, E. J., & Callahan, C. M. (2020). Proficiency and giftedness: The role of language comprehension in gifted identification and achievement. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 43(4), 370–404. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353220955225

Hodges, J., Tay, J., Maeda, Y., & Gentry, M. (2018). A meta-analysis of gifted and talented identification practices. Gifted Child Quarterly, 62(2), 147–174. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986217752107

Mun, R. U., Hemmler, V., Langley, S. D., Ware, S., Gubbins, E. J., Callahan, C. M., McCoach, D. B., & Siegle, D. (2020). Identifying and serving English learners in gifted education: Looking back and moving forward. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 43(4), 297–335. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353220955230

Peters, S. J. (2022). The challenges of achieving equity within public school gifted and talented programs. Gifted Child Quarterly, 66(2), 82–94. https://doi.org/10.1177/00169862211002535

Siegle, D., Gubbins, E. J., O’Rourke, P., Langley, S. D., Mun, R. U., Luria, S. R., Little, C. A., McCoach, D. B., Knupp, T., Callahan, C. M., & Plucker, J. A. (2016). Barriers to underserved students’ participation in gifted programs and possible solutions. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 39(2), 103–131. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353216640930

Del Siegle is director of the National Center for Research on Gifted Education, which is housed at the University of Connecticut. He holds the Lynn and Ray Neag Endowed Chair for Talent Development and is a past president of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). He received the 2021 Ann F. Isaacs Founder’s Memorial Award, 2018 Distinguished Scholar Award, and 2011 Distinguished Service Award from NAGC.

A recent Wall Street Journal article referenced below raised questions about the future of gifted education.  The issue mainly referred to is the underrepresentation of low income and minority groups in GT programs and how this concern was causing school districts to drop their programs. It points up that controversy has ramped up around the practice of providing accelerated classes for selected students, raising questions about how programs will look in coming years.

The article brought to mind a legal term that is called, The Drowning Man Analogy.  Briefly, two people are walking along a river and see a man drowning.  The first person says, “I’m not a good swimmer” and refuses to help.  The second person dives in and tries to rescue the drowning man, but the man squirms away and drowns.  Which person is actionable in a court of law?  Obviously, the person who tried to help but couldn’t do the job to everyone’s satisfaction

Many school administrators are using the same rationale regarding gifted programs.  If we don’t have a program, we can’t be criticized! —“We’ll stop identifying students, get rid of our GT teacher, and drop any name that uses the word, gifted.”  And then they offer some cliches—“We’ll differentiate for everyone.”  “All of our teachers are personalizing the curriculum.” We all know what this means – more worksheets for struggling students and some extra books and assignments for high-ability kids.

The use of universal screening and local norms, concepts that we support and introduced into our own state identification guidelines many years ago, has helped, but the larger question is what kinds of instruments and procedures should we be using to universally screen and compare who does and does not receive supplementary services?  And perhaps an even more important question is how do we make decisions about providing the opportunities, resources, and encouragement that develop the strengths and talents of all our young people?   Universal screening tools favor traditional standardized achievement tests and the kind of screening that focuses on any kind of norms seldom consider exogenous factors  that influence testing and school performance. Predictably, this has resulted in more affluent students receiving a gifted designation. And when all is said and done, local norms still use the cut-off-scores approach that has dominated our identification process.

In most states and countries, almost all students at the third-grade level and above are universally screened by taking state or education ministry required standardized achievement tests. Current research is (Anderson, 2002; Little et al, 2018; Kearner, et al, 2019) currently being conducted on performance-based assessment that shows promise in using this type of assessment procedure for universal screening of primary grades children.  Most states and other countries also use some kind of teacher rating scales that are usually analyzed utilizing locally developed norms or norms provided by the distributors of the scales. When we use any kind of norms (national, state, local) we are continuing to use criteria that make comparisons between and among students rather than the individual strengths and interests of any individual student. Although metric-based scores and national, state, and even local norms inform us about the distribution of traditionally measured academic abilities of groups, they do not zero in on individuals’ co-cognitive strengths that are so important for decision-making about the need and opportunity to provide supplementary services. These strengths don’t make a person gifted or not gifted in the norm-based or entity interpretation of the word, but they are a starting point for decision-making about who should be considered for advanced learning and creative/productive opportunities in particular academic domains and topical strength areas. When all is said and done, local norms tell us how we interpret the metric-based information we collect; however, the more important issue is what kind of information we choose to gather.

Many people in the field have tried to deal with the underrepresentation question that had dominated our field in the past few years but very few practical suggestions for addressing the issue have been offered.  In a previous article (Renzulli, 2021) a system for using Assessment For Learning (as opposed to Assessment Of Learning) is offered as a practical approach for addressing this challenge. Simply stated, assessment for learning looks at strength-based data gathered from the students themselves and focuses on the personal strengths of students as individuals rather than creating norms for student comparisons. These data typically include interests, instructional style preferences, preferred modes of expression, and other co-cognitive factors such as student engagement and executive function skills.  This type of information provides insights into how teachers can modify teaching and learning activities for individuals.

 Assessment for learning is a formative assessment approach. Formative assessment is ongoing, flexible, and usually informal. It includes information that is gathered for the purposes of modifying instruction during an individual lesson or for future instructional planning. It is based on information gathered from the students during or prior to instruction (i.e., pre-assessment); and is used to adapt teaching to meet student needs. Both formative and summative assessments are important but, “Formative assessment with appropriate feedback is the most powerful moderator in the enhancement of achievement” (Hattie, Hattie, & Timperley, 2007).

Joseph Renzulli, Ph.D. is the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut

The views expressed here are not necessarily those of NAGC

References

Anderson, P. (2002). Assessment and development of executive function (EF) during childhood. Child Neuropsychology, 8(2), 71–82. https://doi.org/10.1076/chin.8.2.71.8724

Hattie, J., Hattie, H., & Timperley, W. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1) 78–87. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487

Little, C. A., Adelson, J. L., Kearney, K. L., Cash, K., & O’Brien, R. (2018). Early opportunities to strengthen academic readiness: Effects of summer learning on mathematics achievement. Gifted Child Quarterly, 62, 83–95. doi:10.1177/0016986217738052

Kearney, K. L., Adelson, J. L., Roberts, A. M., Pittard, C. M., O’Brien, R. L., & Little, C. A. (2019, April). Access and identification: Gifted program identification following early referral for high-potential behaviors. Paper presentation at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, Canada.

Renzulli, J. S. (2021).  Assessment for learning:  The missing element for identifying high potential in low income and minority groups.  Gifted Education International, 37 (1), (pp. 1 -10).

Wall Street Journal (2022). The Unclear Future for Gifted-and-Talented Education., The Wall Street Journal | Page R006 Thursday, 11 August 2022]